All my Brazilian drummer friends are here in Austin and won't make the drive (grumble, grumble), but I thought you might want to know about this similar event we're staging on the playa this year:

Tues.: 8-10:45pm, Carnaval: Night in Brazil Dance. Held at SCARAB/Electra camp, and simulcast on Radio Electra. Free colorfully-labelled CDs of the night's music mix to the first 50 dancers.

I've always wished there was more world music on the playa, so starting in '02 I've sponsored an annual world music community dance on Tuesday nights. In '02, it was the Night at the Oasis Dance, which featured North African music as played in the expatriate nightclubs of Paris. Last year, it was the Night in Africa Dance, featuring great Sub-Saharan dance music from Africa. This year, I've got some Brazilian mixes that I think people will really like. Wear Carnaval attire (which can be pretty similar to playa attire as to very "abbreviated" costumes, I suppose), and dance with us under the stars.

If you do manage to get a samba drum corps together, I would love to hear it/see you marching across the playa. Talk about a serious conga line!

What I really want to learn (after Brave Combo's No, No, No, Cha Cha Cha album) are the Cha Cha and the Cumbia. (Of course, Brave Combo playing on the playa would be just wonderful.) Okay, so I like my International dumbed down a little to be comprehensible, but not so far that it's suburbanized.

I'll try to remember to come back here to post the camp location, because I'd love to have you guys there.......I think there's a hidden world music subcommunity out on the playa, and we just need to get together and dance to the stuff!

We're a registered theme camp, so if you remember SCARAB or our sister camp Electra (Radio Electra) you'll be able to see our address in the booklet handed out at the Gate.

I'll also be DJing (playing music, not the beats thing) on Radio Electra every afternoon, which will include quite a bit of world music, and my annual Wed. night radio show--The Send Your Mind Over the Edge Show--from 11pm-1:30 or 2am, will have lots of freaky world music in it (Mongolian and Tuvan throat-singing, Greek space freakouts, etc.).

When I first started to play world music for my campmates/on the radio on the playa, back in '00, I found that the stuff people liked the best were the North African/Middle Eastern tracks......traditional recordings, and especially the hybrid stuff with the dance beats. There is a huge amount of that stuff out there that's really good, so I made that style the theme of the first world music dance I had out in '02.

Your point about "water cultures" is well-taken. Interestingly, the next year's dance with Sub-Saharan African music did not go over as strongly as the North African stuff did the year before (despite the fact that I think the non-desert African music is a stronger set of styles overall).

I've always felt that there was something just "right" about playing desert music (from whichever country) on the playa. A fine synergistic melding of place and musical mood. I guess this year's Carnaval dance will test the theory. Of course, how can people NOT dance their asses off to Brazilian sounds??

that is what you're talking about with sub-saharan music? afro-funk and high life?

i'm a convert to the brasilian sound and am convinced that when people hear it they won't be able to resist! there is less of a sense of 'drama' that you get with the middle eastern stuff... more of an honest up front sensuality combined with sheer joy...

I took the Brazilian mixes out for a test-drive at a party this weekend, and people really seemed to like it. I have high hopes for its effects upon people's hips and backsides on the playa at this year's dance.

Last year, I took the geographical approach to organizing the Sub-Saharan African music dance: started in Senegal (Yousou N'Dour, Ayib Deng, Salif Keita), went down to Mali (the wonderful Habib Koite and Bamada) down into Nigeria (Fela and Femi Kuti, King Sunny Ade) then around the horn and into some of the Central African latin-influenced styles (soukous from Kinsasha, etc.) then into Zimbabwe and Tanzania (Oliver Mtukudzi) and finally down to South Africa. I'm leaving out a lot of names because frankly I can't get close to spelling them. We had a fair turnout at the playa dance last year, but the music just didn't seem to grab people like I thought it would. It may be that through all those very distinct African styles, the beat where the "one" happens keeps moving, so that you can't dance just one way (like, say, with reggae). Don't know. I'll still play lots of that African music on Radio Electra, because I think it's so good and so underexposed in this country.

When listening to the Brazilian mixes this weekend, there is more continuity of style to it....so that may make dancing easier for folks and therefore cause more involuntary buttock gyrations. Hope so, anway.

waltsnipe, SCARAB Musical Director

ps. saw Fela Kuti in Austin back in the mid-80s. It was a cool show, but Femi Kuti blew me away when I saw him at the WOMAD Festival in Seattle a few years back (before Puritan Ashcroft made that annual festival impossible through his obstructionism in foreign musicians being able to get visas to come here to play). Of course, Habib Koite blew everyone out at WOMAD.

Can only say that Femi Kuti's show was one of the best performances I've ever seen... 2.5 hours straight at the Fillmore in SF!

Back to the topic... sorry to have missed such a fabulous set...

Over-thinking why people don't respond to a beat is possible... it just might not be the right time for the that type of music. Give a year or two and African might be the next thing... I'm pretty confident that the Brazilian thing has been popular for a few years now so people will respond with more confidence in their movement and emotions...

Concerning the Radio Electra simulcast of the Carnaval: Night in Brazil Dance this year on the playa (Tues. night, 8-10:45pm), I just found out that Radio Electra will be broadcasting at 89.9 on your FM dial this year.

Here's hoping that everyone who can't join us will at least tune in for some fine, butt-shaking Brazilian music!